June Goal Recap

In June, I did a mostly no-dairy challenge. Not a break from all dairy – I didn’t want to put so much effort in reading labels.  But I avoided the obvious things like cream, ice cream, cheese- anything that obviously has some sort of dairy in it.

I did it because I wanted to see how much better I’d feel. I’m lactose intolerant, but when I ate dairy before, I always took a natural pill (Lactaid). Sometimes I did get bloated or sick, but it wasn’t too bad. Although if you ask Kevin, he’d tell you I always complained about my stomach hurting.
I figured that my body would feel better if I stopped eating something that it doesn’t like, even if I rarely had symptoms because I took Lactaid.

It’s only been a month, and I’ve cheated a few times (I dipped a pretzel in cheese one day and last week I had 2 slices of pizza).  The thing is – I don’t feel any different than I did when I ate dairy every day.  I know it’s only been a month and I should probably give it longer before I judge my progress, so I’m going to continue avoiding dairy to see what happens. But, I won’t be so hard on myself that I won’t let myself eat a cupcake because the icing has dairy in it. Do you know how many times I craved cupcakes in June? I have a bakery next to my apartment.

I also chose to follow a mostly no dairy diet because I thought it would help my acne. I thought my acne was getting better (which could be from lack of dairy, but it could also be from washing my face with coconut oil), but now my acne seems to be getting worse.

Part of me wants to give up and start putting chemicals on my face again – to find something that will make the acne go away.  But I chose to wash my face with organic coconut oil because I want to avoid using chemicals on my skin. To be fair, I’m going to give it one more month before I decide if I need to break up with it.